Sam Bankman-Fried will be charged in New York with at least 4 counts, including fraud and money laundering.
The founder of the ill-fated cryptocurrency platform FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, arrested in the Bahamas, will be indicted by the New York District Attorney’s Office on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and money laundering, The New York Times announced this Tuesday.
Bankman-Fried was arrested this Tuesday in the Bahamas after the attorney for the southern district of New York, Damian Williams, charged him.
In a tweet, Williams reported that the Bahamian authorities had arrested Bankman-Fried at the request of the US government,” based on a secret indictment” presented by the prosecution on which no details were given.
The New Times, which cites a person with knowledge of the legal proceedings as a source, revealed on Tuesday the charges for which the founder of the platform has been accused.
He further explained that Bankman-Fried was cooperative during the arrest, according to a person familiar with the matter. She is scheduled to appear today in the Magistrate Court in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas.
In a statement, released by the media, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said his country and the US “have shared interest in holding to account all individuals associated with FTX who may have betrayed the public’s trust.” and broken the law.”
FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11 and at the end of the same month, the company’s new managers appeared for the first time before the bankruptcy court of the state of Delaware (USA) to begin the restructuring process.
Lawyers for the new board and its current head, John Ray, argue that a “substantial amount” of the company’s assets could have been stolen or are missing.
The new managers have also denounced that the company had a “total absence of corporate controls” and a lack of “reliable financial information”.
The platform, which came to be valued at 32,000 million dollars, could have more than a million creditors around the world. So far, the company has admitted that it owes more than $3 billion to its top 50 creditors.
However, Bankman-Fried blames the bankruptcy in part on the massive sale of cryptocurrencies that occurred at the beginning of the year. For the founder of the company, that sale halved FTX’s guarantee, of about 30,000 million dollars.
At that point, according to Bankman-Fried, the sale of cryptocurrencies continued, combined with a credit crunch and a “flight from the bank,” which reduced the collateral to $9 billion before FTX filed for bankruptcy.
